They enter the Rialto only to have their darkest fears brought to life by The Projectionist – a ghostly figure who holds the horrifying futures of all who attend his screenings. And by the time the viewers realize the truth, escape is no longer an option. For once the ticket is torn, all fates are sealed.

That’s the premise of Nightmare Cinema, a film project that began coming together when producer-director Mick Garris first assembled his team of writers, directors, and producers in the fall of 2015.

The goal: gather some of the most exciting practitioners of dark cinema and give them free reign to create a series of short horror films, mini nightmares for the Rialto Projectionist to queue up and screen for each unlucky patron.

If you’ve been following this blog or reading the trades, you’ll recall the buzz from two years ago, starting with an official announcement at the Morbido Film Fest in Mexico, a fitting venue to unveil an international roster of talent that includes Alejandro Brugues (Cuba), Ryuhei Kitamura (Japan), David Slade (U.K.), and Sandra Becerril (Mexico). Check out the clip below, and don’t worry if you don’t speak Spanish. Most of the video is in English.

Additional announcements followed the Morbido unveiling. Some appeared here at 21st-Century Scop, others appeared in the trades. Here are a few links from Fall 2015:

After that initial buzz, further developments were kept under the radar until Mick announced the latest details at last month’s Son of Monsterpalooza in Burbank. There, accompanied by fellow directors Joe Dante and Alejandro Brugues, Mick lifted the veil on the project once again, this time announcing that it was being prepped for a 2018 release.

And just this week, at Podcast One’s Post Mortem with Mick Garris, director David Slade can be heard talking about his life in film — an impressive career that has brought us Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night, Twilight Eclipse, Hannibal, and American Gods. David and Mick cover all of those productions, and although I was pretty sure I already knew a lot about them, David managed to reveal quite a few intriguing revelations during the hour-plus podcast.

Bottomline: if you’re a fan of dark cinema, you’re going to love listening to David’s interview on Post Mortem. Give it a click. And while you’re at it, take a moment to subscribe to the series. It’s free … and the interviews are priceless.

Naturally, David also talks about This Way to Egress (a.k.a. “Traumatic Descent”) and the seventeen-year journey that finally put it in the hands of The Projectionist at the Rialto. It’s a journey that I’ve written about in the past, covering the first ten-years in the introduction to my book This Way to Egress, and it was great hearing David recount the entire tale from his perspective, including the recent turn of events that led to our new screenplay becoming part of Nightmare Cinema.

(BTW — That’s David and me in the above-right photo, a sureal forward-and-backward view courtesy of a conveniently-placed mirror in an L.A. bistro.)

It’s great to have things coming together on this project. I was on set for filming this past June, and a few weeks ago I screened a rough cut of the Egress segment. It was intense. Even without the final score or completed effects, I found it profoundly unsettling and moving. As David says in his Post Mortem interview: “It really surprised me how intense it was.”

As of this writing, Nightmare Cinema is moving toward a release in early 2018. But the story won’t end there. As Mick tells Simon Thompson in a recent Forbes interview, there are plans “to create more […] Nightmare Cinemas either as feature films or as a TV series.”

And so the journey will continue.

For now, there are certain to be more exciting developments as our release date approaches. When news breaks, I’ll be sure to report it here.

Writers do most their traveling at home. It’s inward travel, exploring memory and imagination in the creation of stories that might one day enter the real world as published stuff.

But sometimes the draw of outside events cuts through the reverie, and that’s the way it was last weekend when I had writing-related gigs popping on both coasts: a guest of honor appearance at the Milford Festival on the east … and Son of Monsterpalooza on the west.

Held in the Marriott Burbank Convention Center, Son of Monsterpalooze is an offshoot of Monsterpalooza, an annual event for fans of film, makeup, special effects, collectible toys, art, and (of course) monsters!

One of the major events at this year’s SoP was the much-anticipated preview of the new horror anthology film Nightmare Cinema. Conceived by Mick Garris and featuring some of the biggest names in horror, the film centers on an aberrant projectionist (played by Micky Rourke) who screens films for the lost souls who come to his theatre.

The photo above was taken last year at an L.A. reception for the film’s writers and directors. Look closely and you’ll see that Richard Christian Matheson is hiding behind Alejandro Brugués. He’s there but not there, which is sort of the way I attended last weekend’s Nightmare Cinema preview, there in spirit while the rest of me took part in the science-fiction track of the Milford Readers and Writers Festival.

Milford’s main events centered on live performances, including a Saturday night readings hosted by Christine Cohen and Will Reeve of the Virginia Kidd Agency.

After the reading, I joined Will Reeve on the balcony for an impromptu jam session. After that, all that remained was the grand finale — a science fiction panel at The Milford Theatre (see photo at the top of this post).

A heartfelt thanks to all who came out to make the event memorable, and especially to Lillian Longendorfer, who put the science-fiction-and-fantasy track together. I’m ready to do it again.

So that’s the broad strokes. In the days ahead, I try posting more on the forthcoming film and the Milford Festival events. Until then … scop on!

Images:

Gordon Van Gelder, Paul Witcover, the 21st-Century Scop, John Grant, and Robert Levy on stage at the Milford Theatre.

Joe Dante, Mick Garris, and Alejandro Brugués on stage at Son of Monsterpalooza.

Nevertheless, despite the distance and the impossibility of two places at once, I’m eagerly looking forward to both.

As science-fiction guest of honor at the Milford Festival, I’ll be taking part a program that will include a marathon screening of the original five seasons of The Twilight Zone, fiction readings at the historic Dimmick Inn on September 16, and a panel discussion at the Milford Theater on September 17. Among the other writers featured at these events will be Paul Witchover, Robert Levy, John Grant, and Gordon Van Gelder. Good company, indeed.

Paul Witcover is the author of five novels, most recently The Watchman of Eternity and a collection of short stories. He has been a finalist for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson and Locus Awards.

Robert Levy’s novel The Glittering World was a finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. His shorter work has recently appeared in Black Static, Shadows & Tall Trees, Wild Stories: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction and The Best Horror of the Year.

John Grant is the author of about seventy books, including twenty fiction novels and non-fiction books that include the highly successful Discarded Science, Corrupted Science and others. He has won the Hugo Award twice, the World Fantasy Award and various other international literary awards.

Gordon Van Gelder is the publisher of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the long-running publication that first brought us such sf classics as Stephen King’s Dark Tower, Daniel Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon, Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, and Robert H. Heinlein’s serial “Starship Soldier” (which later became the novel Starship Troopers). It is the magazine that first introduced me to the genre when I was in my early teens, and it remains the one publication that I read cover to cover the moment it arrives. Gordon also served for many years as the editor of F&SF, and during that time I had the pleasure of working with him on a number of stories that appeared there between 2001 and 2013.

And while those sf writers are gathering on on the East Coast, Mick Garris and friends will be holding a special preview event at Son of Monsterpalooza at the Burbank Marriott Convention Center in California. The weekend event will feature dozens of celebrity guests from the worlds of horror, science fiction, and fantasy, with a featured event taking place on September 17, when a panel presentation will be lifting the veil of secrecy on Nightmare Cinema, our new anthology horror film that will be coming to theaters next year!

Joining Mick at the event will be directors Joe Dante (Gremlins), Alejandro Brugues (Juan of the Dead), and David Slade (30 Days of Night). I hear that Ryuhei Kitamura (Midnight Meat Train), who is also involved in the project, has another commitment for the weekend and will not be attending. Nevertheless, he’ll be there in spirit, as will I.

So mark your calendar for a bicoastal weekend of science fiction, fantasy, and horror … and be sure to stop back here for more updates in the days ahead. It’s going to be an exciting month.

On Wednesday, April 27, I’ll be visiting the Penguin Bookshop in Sewickley to talk about writing stories and adapting them for film. Along the way, I’ll be sharing some of the latest news about Nightmare Cinema, the forthcoming feature film that will include an adaptation of my story “Traumatic Descent.”

Created by Mick Garris, Nightmare Cinema is an anthology film (think Steven Spielberg’s Twilight Zone: The Movie, George Romero’s Creepshow, or the classic Dead of Night) composed of five short films by five different directors. Here’s how a new promotional release describes the project:

Five acclaimed directors of the most macabre horror films from around the world, tell new blood-curdling stories, all carefully curated into the multi-platform feature film, Nightmare Cinema. It’s a selection of one-of-a-kind tales of terror that turns the genre conventions on their heads, but without every giving up the primary desire to scare the hell out of the audience.

Alejandro Brugués and Mick Garris will each direct their own screenplays, “The Thing in the Woods” and “Dead.”

Ryuhei Kitamura will direct “Mashit,” written by Sandra Becerril. Making her home in Mexico City, she is the author of numerous novels, short stories, and film scripts. Her work is well known to horror fans in Mexico, Argentina, and Spain, and her forthcoming film Desde tu Infierno (checkout the trailer here) and Nightmare Cinema are sure to win her plenty of new fans from around the world.

Rounding out the Nightmare Cinema roster will be “This Way to Egress,” directed by David Slade, from our collaborative adaptation of my story “Traumatic Descent.”

Linking the five episodes in Nightmare Cinema will be a wraparound story written and directed by Mick Garris. Here’s the synopsis:

Sitting at the edge of a deserted town, under the guise of a decrepit theatre, is the gateway between heaven and hell. It can only be found by tortured souls, lost in a place of unknown time and origin.

In this twisted anthology, at least one character from each of the five shorts arrives at the cinematic purgatory, unaware of their fate. Upon entering the theatre, they are forced to watch their deepest and darkest fears play out before them. Lurking in the shadows is the Projectionist, who preys upon their souls with his collection of disturbing film reels. As each reel spins its sinister tale, the characters find frightening parallels to their own lives.

But by the time they realize the truth, escape is no longer an option. For once the ticket is torn, their fate is sealed at NIGHTMARE CINEMA.

Want to hear more? If so, I’ll be glad to share a few more highlights at this month’s installment of the Penguin Bookshop Writers Series (PBWS), which gets under way at 6:30 pm on April 27. If you live in the Pittsburgh area, I hope you’ll consider dropping by for a conversation about books and writing in one of the region’s great independent bookstores.

The Penguin has been a fixture in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, since 1929. With six different owners and three different locations over the last 85-plus years, the Penguin has remained a vital community institution thanks to the continued loyalty of its customers and the passion of its booksellers. It remains one of the local and regional community’s greatest treasures.

PBWS presents authors and publishing professionals each month who discuss aspects of both the art and the business of writing. The format ranges from hands-on workshops to lectures and panel discussions. The goal of PBWS is to unite published writers with aspiring writers, aspiring writers with publishing professionals, and curious readers interested in the author’s craft with professional writers.

In short, you won’t want to miss this one. Bring your friends . . . and let the nightmares begin.